Flacco threw the decisive 18-yard touchdown pass to T.J. Houshmandzadeh with 34 seconds left in the Ravens' 17-14 win over the Steelers on Oct. 3. The Steelers didn't blitz on the play, and Flacco was free to throw without pressure.

That's a misleading statement. The Steelers did bring pressure on that play. They overloaded one side of the line with Troy and Harrison, but the Ravens went with a max protect call (7 blockers) and picked up the extra rushers. My questions are: did the Ravens use max protect in this game? If they did, what did the Steelers do differently to get to Flacco. If they didn't use max protect, why not?

It's disheartening to think we have to blitz to get pressure. The 3-4 can apply pressure with 4 rushers... the 4th being disguised before the snap. Put it this way, if we can't get pressure with 4 guys against a possible rematch with the Patriots we lose. Simple as that.

Not at all saying not to blitz. Just pick your spots.

the giants blitzed Tom GAYdy pretty much the whole game(superbowl 42) and the only score 14 points and OUR D is just as good as that D or BETTER

That's a misleading statement. The Steelers did bring pressure on that play. They overloaded one side of the line with Troy and Harrison, but the Ravens went with a max protect call (7 blockers) and picked up the extra rushers. My questions are: did the Ravens use max protect in this game? If they did, what did the Steelers do differently to get to Flacco. If they didn't use max protect, why not?

On the two long passes by Flacco they went max protect, but Clark bit on the play action once and Mcfadden on the other.

BLITZ!!!! Let's be honest, our secondary (CB's) is not very good (i know, big shock) however; we have the personnel to make the QB's life miserable and I say no more trying to hide the CB's and let's hit some folks. It was hard to watch Brady pick us apart. I say if you're gonna get beat, get beat bad like a long pass. Don't get picked apart. i know that's not conventional but we have a heck of a linebacking corps. Nice call Lebeau!

I hope we live by this for the rest of the season. Baltimore beat Brady with pressure

Did you mean Cleveland? I think they did it mostly by running the ball, which for some reason the Jets (and Steelers, for that matter) decided not to do, despite the fact that they were doing so quite effectively. Wanna beat the Cheats? Run the ball, eat up the clock, keep Brady off the field.

Of course, that's exactly what the Patriots are going to be expecting us to do, so there's no way that sly dog Bruce Arians will fall for that. Nope. Passes and gadget plays, here we come.

It's disheartening to think we have to blitz to get pressure. The 3-4 can apply pressure with 4 rushers... the 4th being disguised before the snap. Put it this way, if we can't get pressure with 4 guys against a possible rematch with the Patriots we lose. Simple as that.

Not at all saying not to blitz. Just pick your spots.

Not getting preasure with 4 guys is the blitzing linebacker not playing well or getting held too much. I haven't seen many exotic blitzes though. A lot of James Harrison in a 3 point stance, so you know he'll rush, its essentially just a 4-3 defense at that point. Same goes for Woodley. They still have run a lot of 1 down linemen and 4-5 linebackers crowding the line of scrimmage to confuse everyone, but it seemed to be called a lot more in the 2nd half against the Ravens.

The odd looks will force quarterbacks to throw short, which is bad against the steelers zone as we've seen in the past, which is why 6 guys will be on the line of scrimmage but a couple will still step back and cause a disruption or Keisel gets his hands up. After the quarterback gets used to players dropping back, he'll audible or look for a longer pass play, thats when LeBeau usually calls a big blitz. But its a chess game, he doesn't know when the quarterback will do this, he just has to guess, but he usually knows when a quarterback will do what he wants.

Did you mean Cleveland? I think they did it mostly by running the ball, which for some reason the Jets (and Steelers, for that matter) decided not to do, despite the fact that they were doing so quite effectively. Wanna beat the Cheats? Run the ball, eat up the clock, keep Brady off the field.

Of course, that's exactly what the Patriots are going to be expecting us to do, so there's no way that sly dog Bruce Arians will fall for that. Nope. Passes and gadget plays, here we come.

Teams are afraid to do this because Brady scores everytime he's on the field. You play eat the clock but only score a field goal, Brady will beat you with touchdowns or field goals if you just punt. He's turned into what Manning was a couple years, a scoring machine, and it doesn't have to be him, he'll get his team down there then let the running backs and OL pound the rock while the defense is tired.

If a team stopped Brady on his first drive, they'd have confidense to run the clock, but usually Brady scores and the other team goes into panic mode.

Watch NE play. They will run almost the same play on the same person until it stops working. When it stops working, they go somewhere else and keep using it again until they can defend it. It has been the best play calling i've seen so far.